EMERGING MARKETS-EM assets steady after rally as investors digest Fed signals, US data

By Niket Nishant

Nov 27 (Reuters) - Emerging market assets held steady on Thursday after three consecutive sessions of gains, with investors digesting a spate of developments that have buoyed global sentiment this week.

The MSCI index for emerging market equities .MSCIEF rose 0.04% and the index for regional currencies .MIEM00000CUS was up 0.02%.

The moves laid bare how much pessimism had been baked into market prices after Fed Chair Jerome Powell last month cast doubt on a December rate cut, pouring cold water on hopes of aggressive easing.

The risk-off mood exacerbated a sell-off before dovish remarks from other Fed officials helped calm nerves. Since then, several data prints released after the reopening of the federal government in the U.S. have bolstered the case for a December cut.

"A barrage of data released on Tuesday confirmed the view that the U.S. is softening," said Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com.

"The data isn't awful, but soft enough to enable the Federal Reserve to consider easing rates further, even if just as a precautionary measure in case the labour market has deteriorated further in the past few months."

SOUTH AFRICA, UKRAINE IN FOCUS

Performance across the emerging-market universe remains uneven, with a host of idiosyncratic risks driving local moves.

In South Africa, traders were eyeing political developments after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would not invite the country to next year's G20 summit, further straining ties between Washington and Pretoria.

The South African rand ZAR=D3 was 0.1% weaker against the dollar.

Investors are also watching for signs of progress on a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. However, previous such hopes for a breakthrough have been dashed so far.

The International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday it had reached a staff-level agreement on a new four-year, $8.2 billion program for Ukraine as the country faces mounting wartime fiscal pressures.

The IMF also estimated that Kyiv faces a total financing gap of $136.5 billion for 2026–2029. The country's bonds were steady on Thursday.

Ukraine's government and a group of investors holding its GDP warrants have entered a third round of formal restructuring talks, Reuters reported, marking the second such attempt in less than a month to clinch a deal on $3.2 billion of growth-linked instruments.

TURKEY GAINS, CHINA PROPERTY UNDER PRESSURE

Turkish equities .XU100 inched up 0.6%. Economic confidence in November rose 1.3% from the prior month, data from the statistics institute showed.

Hungarian equities .BUX were flat. Shares of the second-largest lender MBH Bank MBHB.BU surged 23.4%, clawing back losses after a sharp decline earlier this week triggered by a plan to sell 7% of its shares in a public offering.

Chinese and Hong Kong equities also inched higher, supported by rebounds in chipmakers and artificial-intelligence-related names. The Shanghai Composite Index .SSEC rose 0.3% and Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng Index .HSI climbed 0.1%.

However, property remained a key pressure point. Shares of China Vanke 000002.SZ slumped as much as 8.8% after the developer said it would seek to delay an onshore bond repayment for the first time. Its bond prices also tumbled to roughly half their value.